US patent application No. 2007/205670 describes the use of a home network to control lamps and other devices in the home. The use of a multi-way switch group is described, with a plurality of switches that are used to control the same lamp. A user interface is provided that has a display on which the user can select the switches that will be part of the multi-way switch group. Based on this selection, a multi-way message packet is transmitted to inform the switches of the membership of the multi-way switch group. Upon reception of such a message packet the relevant switches copy the setting state specified by the message packet.
The home network of US2007/205670 has the disadvantage that it requires selection of the multi-way group via a user interface. This requires overhead costs, and it may make installation too complex for many consumers without technical skills.
US patent application No. 2007/080823 describes a home network with switches that communicate with lamps via a wireless home network. A method of “pairing” switches and lamps is described (i.e. establishing which specific lamps will respond to messages from a specific switch). Pairing involves making a selected lamp receptive to a pairing request message and transmitting the pairing request message from a switch. When this happens the selected lamp responds by copying ID information from the pairing request message. Subsequently the lamp only responds with command messages with this ID.
The system of US2007/080823 does not describe pairing with a group of switches. Arguably, one could imagine that a lamp could be paired to a group of devices by using successive messages to send ID information of different switches to the lamp, so that the lamp can store the ID information for each of these switches. But this would require users to perform a complex installation, which may be too complex for many consumers without technical skills.